Sunday, March 10, 2013

According to the American Independent, via The Huffington Post, the Regnerus study - which cause a huge controversy because it said that children raised by same-sex families encounter problems - was created specifically to sway Supreme Court decisions on marriage equality. And the funders of the study knew what the study would "prove" before the work on it began:

The conservative funders who bankrolled a flawed and widely cited
academic study that's critical of gay marriage choreographed its release
in time to influence “major decisions of the Supreme Court,” documents
show.

The documents, recently obtained
through public-records requests by The American Independent and
published in collaboration with The Huffington Post, show that the
Witherspoon Institute recruited a professor from a major university to
carry out a study that was designed to manipulate public policy. In
communicating with donors about the research project, Witherspoon’s
president clearly expected results unfavorable to the gay-marriage
movement.

The think tank’s efforts paid off. The New Family Structures Study
came out just in time for opponents of gay marriage to cite it in
multiple federal cases involving marriage equality – including two cases
soon to be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.

James Wright, editor of Social Science Research, which published the
study’s findings last summer, said he was not aware of the funders’
intentions to use his academic journal to sway the Supreme Court.

“So
far as the Supreme Court is concerned, I consider marriage and adoption
rights for GLBT people to be a matter of civil rights, i.e., a legal
question, not something to be ‘resolved’ by empirical research, and I
resent having social science data and research drawn into such debates,”
Wright, a University of Central Florida sociology professor, said in an
email.

In a study slammed for its methodology, funding, and academic
integrity, University of Texas associate sociology professor Mark
Regnerus found that children who grew up in households where one parent
had a same-sex relationship (regardless of whether the children lived
with that parent or that parent’s supposed same-sex partner) were more
likely to experience negative social, psychological, and economic
outcomes than children raised by a married heterosexual couple

Records show that an academic consultant hired by UT to conduct data
analysis for the project was a longtime fellow of the Witherspoon
Institute, which shelled out about $700,000 for the research.
Documentation about University of Virginia associate sociology professor
W. Bradford Wilcox’s dual roles contradict Regnerus’ assertions that
the think tank wasn’t involved with how the study was designed or
carried out.

To put a long story short, before this study was even put to paper, those funding it had already decided what it would "prove" and how they would "use" it. Many of us lgbtq bloggers and activists (i.e. myself, Scott Rose, Jeremy Hooper, Wayne Besen, Rob Tisinai, and a vast number of others) knew something was phony about the Regnerus study at the time in which it was publicized. And now the Huffington Post and the American Independent confirms it:

. . .when Regnerus first published his New Family Structures Study in the
July 2012 issue of Social Science Research, he made a point of saying
that his conservative funders had not played a role in designing the
research or analyzing the data.

“The NFSS was supported in part by grants from the Witherspoon
Institute and the Bradley Foundation,” he wrote. “While both of these
are commonly known for their support of conservative causes — just as
other private foundations are known for supporting more liberal causes —
the funding sources played no role at all in the design or conduct of
the study, the analyses, the interpretations of the data, or in the
preparation of this manuscript.”

He reiterated this statement in his follow-up analysis
of the study, again writing that “[n]o funding agency representatives
were consulted about research design, survey contents, analysis, or
conclusions.”

Regnerus’ assertions come into question in light of revelations
last year that Wilcox had been hired on contract by UT to assist
Regnerus with the data analysis of the study. During part of that time,
Wilcox was also the director of Witherspoon’s Program on Family,
Marriage, and Democracy, out of which the study was conceptualized and
Regnerus was recruited. Wilcox had been a fellow with Witherspoon from
2004 to 2011, and he has said that he worked as a paid consultant on the study from October 2010 to April 2012.

About Me

Alvin McEwen is 46-year-old African-American gay man who resides in Columbia, SC.
McEwen's blog, Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters, and writings have been mentioned by Americablog.com, Goodasyou.org, People for the American Way, PageOneQ.com, The Washington Post, Raw Story, The Advocate, Media Matters for America, Crooksandliars.com, Thinkprogress.org, Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish, Melissa Harris-Perry, The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell, Newsweek, The Daily Beast, The Washington Blade, and Foxnews.com.
In addition, he is also a past contributor to Pam's House Blend,Justice For All, LGBTQ Nation, and Alternet.org. He is a present contributor to the Daily Kos and the Huffington Post,
He is the 2007 recipient of the Harriet Daniels Hancock Volunteer of the Year Award and the 2010 recipient of the Order of the Pink Palmetto from the SC Pride Movement as well as the 2009 recipient of the Audre Lorde/James Baldwin Civil Rights Activist Award from SC Black Pride. In addition, he is a three-time nominee of the Ed Madden Media Advocacy Award from SC Pride.